Sunday, May 15

Another way to transfer an embroidery pattern...print and iron on


For the Embroidery Commons project (I wrote about it here) I needed to transfer some text to fabric. My assigned line is "In the same way". And because the term the Mr. X Stitch family  (of which I am temporarily part of for this project, like a distant Dutch cousin) is stitching, is 'Fractal', I thought it would be fun to embroider the same line four times. I'm not that knowledgeable when it comes to Fractals but I do know they tend to repeat themselves a bit.  Mr. Bunny got the idea to add another layer of clever by using a simple pattern within the pattern by moving the colour forward one place with each subsequent line.

I thought I'd try to transfer the text to fabric by simply ironing on the text I printed on my laser printer. And I was not disappointed. Sure it's a bit vague but good enough for me to embroider the letters. I ironed it on right after printing and I'm not sure if it will transfer all that well if you wait a bit longer. Before printing the sheet I reversed the text in an image editing program so the text would appear in the right way on the fabric. I tend to use different transfer methods for different type of patterns and I think this way of transferring works well for simple patterns and/or patterns with bold lines. And if you like vague fuzzy lines...;)

Update: this may not work with every printer but it's worth a try, right?

8 comments:

  1. Very very clever!!!!!! What a brilliant idea...i will surely be using this ..thank you....

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  2. Which type of printer did you use, Nicole? I've done this with a laser printer and got a similar result to yours here.

    I wonder if inkjet works too...

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  3. I used a Dell laser printer...Results may vary per laser printer of course but it's worth a try, right? I think for this purpose it's good enough. Not sure what a inkjet printer would make of this...

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  4. You're such a clever girl! I have to try this someday. I think this method makes transfering images such an easy task.

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  5. I would love to know what image editing program you used and if it works with Word.

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  6. Hi Shirley, I used a program called 'GIMP' it's free and you can download it from the internet. You won't have to use Word for it because in GIMP you can type words/sentences as well. Good luck!

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  7. I just tried this with an inkjet printer and it doesn't work - juts thought other people might like to know before they try it! Always worth experimenting :)

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  8. With an inkjet printer you can print directly on the fabric !!

    It's funny but I have had this happen to me ACCIDENTALLY - when I first started working with fusible webbing I put a piece of paper between the iron and fabric and d'oh transfered the ink from the paper onto my iron and then got black on everything thing in the room, somehow, simultaneously. I have an HP B&W Laserjet.

    But I never thought to do it on purpose! It works with newspapers too, oops.

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